


in a sleep as soft as death

by liesmyth



Category: Secret History - Donna Tartt
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Gen, Time Loop, Time Travel Makes Things Much Worse, Trying To Change The Timeline By Preemptively Killing Someone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-16 13:38:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17550707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liesmyth/pseuds/liesmyth
Summary: It was two nineteen in the afternoon. There was no snow to be seen, and the lilies and trilliums were all in bloom. And Bunny was still alive.





	in a sleep as soft as death

**Author's Note:**

  * For [renaissance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/renaissance/gifts).



> Dear renaissance, thank you so much for your fabulous prompts. I dearly hope you'll enjoy this, and happy exchange!
> 
> Many, many thanks to [Luna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunavagant/) for the amazing beta, and extra thanks for [Prinz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prinzenhasserin/) for some crucial tinkering and to [Lu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixflight/) for making one important scene about five times better.
> 
> Some content notes: the warning for Graphic Depictions of Violence applies to the end of this fic only (the last time loop) and CNTW refers to the open ending. This fic includes canon-typical mentions of alcohol and drug use and at one point suicide is briefly mentioned, though never seriously considered, as a mean to escape a time loop.

**βʹ**

I woke up in my bed, bright sunlight streaking over my pillow and across my eyes. There was a pain in my neck, and I sat up blinking, remembering: Bunny falling to his death into the ravine, the soft green ferns in Henry’s hands, as soft as the soothing white snow, the gentle fall of dark hair over my chest.

I couldn’t remember getting back to Monmouth House yesterday, or perhaps this morning. I turned to my bedside clock to check the time — it was two nineteen in the afternoon, and that immediately woke me up. I stood up, cold fear like ice prickling in my stomach. I’d slept the morning away in my senseless cocoon, and feared what may have happened on the other side of that locked door.

Had they found Bunny’s body? It had been snowing fiercely well into the night, and when I glanced out of the window I did so expecting the deceptively peaceful wonderland that had almost claimed my life.

Instead, the building and ground were clear. There was no snow to be seen, and the lilies and trilliums were all in bloom.

It was a beautiful sight. I recoiled from it, head spinning, mind reeling as I tried to make sense of what I saw clear in front of me.

In the corridor, I walked straight into Judy Poovey. She was wearing make-up, applied with care, and had only one earring on.

“Richard,” she said, surprised. “Are you coming to the party? Swing—”

“Swing into spring.”

It was a horrified whisper to my own ears. Perhaps, I decided then, I had gone insane. Perhaps I was dreaming. I dug my nails sharply into my palm, and it hurt.

“Richard.” This time there was almost concern in Judy’s voice. “Are you all right? You look pale. Do you want me to give you something?” And then, suspicious. “What did you take?”

“Nothing,” I said, truthfully.

“Really.”

“I didn’t take anything. I had a bad dream.”

I looked her up and down. Her lips were painted coral red and her clothes were the same as yesterday, but Judy wouldn’t be caught dead recycling an outfit. Her circle seemed to view that as the worst possible sin, second only to dating freshmen.

“—just something to mellow you down…”

“I’m fine. I just need some air.” That was Bunny’s excuse when he wandered away for a walk.

“At least eat something. You’ll feel better.”

She sounded almost motherly. “Thanks, Judy,” I said, out of instinct, and she looked startled.

“Does this mean you’re coming?” Her cheekbones were streaked red. “Maybe you could bring your friend too. The loud one. The library’s no place to be on a Sunday.”

Bunny had gone to the library in my dream, too, and left a note for Marion there. I left feeling irrationally disturbed, as if someone, out there, was walking on my grave.

Bunny’s note was just as I remembered, and the party too was the same blaze of bad taste and juvenile inebriation. I felt like a ghost walking the Earth, a mystic of ancient times blessed with the gift of Sight. I remembered Henry’s dreamy words about Dionysus, the feeling of a presence walking alongside their own. Perhaps, I hoped then, I had been chosen to join them. The thought filled my mind with intrigue, and a perverse sort of pride.

I found the others waiting by the ravine, as I expected.

“What the hell, Richard,” said Charles. “What are you doing here? We thought…”

“There is a party. Bunny was just there, I saw him,” I informed them. And then, unable to refrain, “He looked about ready to leave. Maybe we shouldn’t go yet.”

Henry’s face was pale and devoid of all emotions, almost like a statue. He nodded.

Bunny came up the path ten-odds minutes later. He saw Henry walking out from behind the bushes and frowned, and then it was too late.

His screams as he fell, too, were just as I remembered.

We left right after, shaken and trying to hide it, and I knew without needing to ask that the others would’ve rather I kept my distance.

I remembered this part well. I went to Judy’s room to find her there, bright and bored, and scored myself a pill and an invitation to a basement party. I felt pleasantly dizzy, colors and shapes blending into each other, my senses pleasantly mellowed.

I walked up to her, the girl from my dream, with her blue eyes and long chestnut hair.

“I’ve seen you before,” I said, loose-limbed and inebriated. “In a vision.”

She laughed, and her breath was warm and wine-sweet. Then she took me by the hand, and we left.

Outside, there was snow.

 

**γʹ**

The next day I woke up in my room, at two nineteen. I felt a horrified jolt in my ribcage, panic like clamps around my heart. From my window, I could see the flowers in bloom. I opened the door to find Judy in the hallway, loitering like a vulture.

“Are you going to Swing into Spring?”

She blinked. “Yes. Are you—”

I slammed the door on her startled face, cutting off her muffled protests. Then I thought better of it and turned the doorknob again, pushing an obstinate lock of hair back on my forehead as I looked at Judy.

“Do you have any sleeping pills?”

Judy’s blinking, I decided, made her look rather owlish. Her cheeks were flaming. “Are you for fucking real?”

I shrugged, closing the door again. My room felt suffocating, walls closing on me like a cage as I paced back and forth through it. Then I lay back over the bedcovers and closed my eyes, to no avail. My head hurt and my chest felt heavy, and I wished to be anywhere but in this room I couldn’t seem to escape, but I couldn’t find in myself the strength to leave. I couldn’t bear to see everything just as it had been yesterday and the day before: Bunny’s note in the library, Judy’s dangling earring, Francis smoking between the bushes at the crest of the ravine. 

I worked on my Greek but all the words I’d ever known seemed to slip my mind. In a fit of despair, I threw open my French notebooks and began reading. Once the sky outside began to turn purple — five fifty, the clock said, I gave up all pretenses and threw myself on my bed again. Bunny must be dead by now, certainly. Or would the others have left after hours of waiting, given up when I didn’t come to find them?

It was a quarter after eight when I began to feel hungry, even as nervous as I was. Judy would have bagels in her rooms, I remembered, and perhaps would be high enough by now to forget that she’d told me to fuck off just this morning, if not in so many words. But the thought of braving the world outside my door unnerved me in a way I couldn’t put into words. I never remembered returning to Monmouth, and yet I felt as if I’d been trapped here an eternity.

There was a knock at the door, as startling as thunderbolt.

“Richard?” Another knock and then one more, building up to a frantic crescendo. “Let me in.”

It was Francis.

I opened the door to find him scratching nervously at his chin, wiping his other palm on the leg of his pants. He was pale, and his lips looked very red. His eyes were wide and dark.

“Are you high?” I asked, stupidly. Francis pushed past me, letting himself in.

“Close the door,” he said. And then, when I’d complied, “We’ve done it. I came to tell you how it went.”

 _We’ve done it_ , he said, matter of factly, and I remembered how scared Bunny had looked when Henry had pushed him down the ravine. Francis was standing in the middle of my room with nothing of his casual elegance and all the coiled energy of a spring pulled taut.

“Why did you come here?” I asked. “Wouldn’t that spoil your alibi?”

“You’re sick,” said Francis. “That is your alibi if anyone asks, though it’s not really much. I came to check on you and make sure you’re well enough for class tomorrow — Henry said don’t worry about your homework. Charles will do them for you.”

“I’ve already done my homework,” I said, rather stupidly. Then I shrugged. “Not much else to do.”

Francis shrugged right back, slightly hunched, eyes just as wide and lost.

“All right,” he said, and then he took a step closer and put his hands on my cheeks, and he leaned down to kiss me.

“Francis—” I said, but his lips were on my own, cold and chapped, and then his tongue pushed warm into my mouth. I stood there, slightly stunned, face cradled in the hold of Francis’s delicate hands. He was good at this. He sucked on my lip and I felt the slight scrape of teeth, and then he pulled back and kissed at the corner of my mouth, the curve of my jaw.

“Francis,” I said, again. “What are you doing?”

“Shut up.” He kissed me on the lips once more, open-mouthed and demanding. “What do you think?”

I couldn’t think at all. I clutched at Francis’s shoulders, not to push him away but to hold myself steady, a solid presence in the midst of all this terrible uncertainty.

I clung to him as to an anchor, drifting in the waters. Slowly, I let Francis walk me backward to the bed.

 

**δʹ**

In the morning, Francis wasn’t there. I rolled around in my empty bed and knew without even looking that outside the flowers would be in bloom and the air warmth with spring, another endless Sunday. It was two nineteen.

I found Judy in the hallway, fastening her earring.

“Can I go with you to the party?” I asked before she could speak. “I don’t have anything to drink in my room.”

Judy sniffled loudly through her too-red nostrils, then smiled enthusiastically. “Sure,” she said. “Have you eaten? You know, you should get some food if you’re going to drink, or you’ll end up barfing on someone’s shoes. And don’t get any coke from Ashley, you don’t wanna know what her friends cut it with. And…”

I followed her outside, pretending to listen. Staying sober was the last thing I wanted; I had beer and cheap wine and too-warm tequila, and I didn’t touch Ashley’s coke but I scored some pot and sat cross-legged under a tree to smoke in peace, eyes squinting against the afternoon sun.

Then I saw Bunny, sauntering around without a care in the world, too self-absorbed to grasp the magnitude of the hell he’d unleashed onto us. On me, most of all, forced to relive this endless day over and over like a curse.

At that moment, I wanted Bunny dead more than ever. It was no longer a matter of necessity, to keep safe the slice of life I’d carved for myself in Hampden. It was raw, animal hatred. I felt the urge to sink my fist into the flesh of Bunny’s belly and make it hurt, to kick him in the ribs until he squealed, to push the sole of my shoe over his throat and step into it hard.

Instead, I stood up and made my way to the ravine, unseen.

“It’s me,” I called out, once I was close enough to be heard.

“Richard?” It was Henry, frowning. “Are you drunk?”

“A bit.” I shrugged, one arm instead of two because it seemed simpler to manage. Henry’s eyes followed me warily. There was a small line etched into Camilla’s pale forehead, and Charles didn’t look like he cared either way. Francis — I caught a glimpse of his red mouth and turned away.

“I came from the party,” I explained. “There was beer. Among other things.” And then, “Bunny was there, too. You know, he’s about to walk here. Better hide again.”

“What _the fuck_ —” said Francis, at the same time as Henry asked, “Did you talk to him?” His voice was cold as snow, and just as terrible.

“I didn’t, he didn’t see me…” I began to explain, but there was no time.

Footsteps were coming up the path, and we all scrambled. Henry hid; the four of us remained in plain sight. The top of Bunny’s head appeared, then the rest of him. He swore.

Afterward, I wondered if Henry had truly suspected I might have confessed to Bunny at the party, betray them all this way. Nothing could have been further from the truth, but what was even the point in explaining myself? I didn’t know if it would last. I didn’t know if Henry would remember, tomorrow, or any of the others.

In the end I left, alone, wandered around the Hampden buildings as the snow began to fall, first as thin as sugar then wet and cold enough to make me shiver. It looked peaceful, but I knew better.

I couldn’t seem to escape it.

 

**εʹ**

The next day I went back to the ravine again. I had become intimately familiar with the scene: the desert woods and the jagged rocks below, the smudge of dirt on Charles’s cheek, Camilla hiding up in one of the trees. Bunny’s wide eyes were familiar too, the shocked _O_ of his mouth at the beginning of the fall. Then the scream.

I watched, impassive, and didn’t say a word as we rode back to town. Henry’s directed us to our roles with the coordination of a maestro. The twins should go home for dinner, Francis should help with the car. I, the odd one out, should go back to Monmouth House and be quiet.

“Wait,” said Francis, as I was about to leave. “Wait. I need to tell you something. _Wait_.”

And then, in a rush. “I tried to talk to you this morning. I came to your room and knocked over and over, and that Poovey girl saw me in the hallway and wouldn’t shut up, and you didn’t hear me through the door.”

That was new, I thought, idly. And then the momentous significance of Francis’s words registered, and I went still.

“Francis,” I said, weakly.

“You wouldn’t wake up. I slammed on your door for half an hour. Some freshmen asked me if I was well. Tried to call the house chairperson, even. But I went to Henry’s instead. I figured I’d see you later. You were in the woods yesterday,” he pushed the words through with some difficulty, voice shaking. “You knew Bunny would be coming up, and when.”

“Yes,” I said, carefully. Francis laughed, choked and bitter.

“Fuck. I can’t —I thought maybe I was going insane, yesterday. That I’d dreamed it all. But I can’t wake up.”

I knew the feeling well, by now. Nerve-wracking and claustrophobic, never-ending.

“Richard,” Francis said. “What is happening to us?”

 

**ϛʹ**

There was no way to find out. We tried: I made plans to meet up with Francis as soon as I woke up next, at two nineteen, Henry be damned, and holed up in Francis’s apartment until the evening when Henry and the twins tracked us down, sour-faced and furious.

“Really?” Charles told Francis, half-incredulous and half-screaming. “You just _left_ like—”

“Oh, shut it,” said Francis, who’d spent the entire afternoon drinking. “My head hurts. Is he dead? I don’t really care.”

Charles turned to me then, face pinched and lips drawn into a thin line. “And _you_ , Richard.”

“Oh, be quiet. I invited him here, didn’t I?” And then, “We can talk about it tomorrow if you really care so much.” And, to Henry, “Congratulations on your plan. Tell me, did he scream when you pushed him down?”

Henry pinched his nose, and didn’t reply.

They left shortly after, leaving Francis and me with a variety of half-finished bottles. We remained in silence, staring at the window, until the first flakes of snow began to fall.

Then Francis put his hand on my leg, and I let him.

 

**ζʹ**

I woke up to Francis pounding at my door.

“I wasn’t there yesterday,” he said, immediately. “I wasn’t— I didn’t _do_ anything. Why is this still happening?”

I hadn’t done anything either, I felt the urge to reply, and yet I’d found myself trapped in this cycle from the very beginning. I hadn’t been the one to kill an innocent farmer and leave his body unburied on his own land.

“Maybe,” I tried, “maybe is not what we did, but what we didn’t. Maybe someone else should do it. Push him down. Instead of Henry.” And yet the words didn’t make sense to my own ears. How could killing Bunny ourselves break whatever curse we found ourselves in? It had been Henry’s plan from the start. Or perhaps we shouldn’t kill Bunny at all? That seemed risky.

“Maybe,” Francis said. “Maybe we should bury him.”

I snorted. “Good luck talking Henry into that.”

“ _Aut tu mihi terram inice, namque potes_ ,” he recited. “Just a fistful of it. It’s bad luck, to leave a body unburied.”

Francis had shown up at my door carrying the same bottle we’d drunk from yesterday, and we were well into it already. It seemed a fine enough plan: we waited until it was getting dark, then waited some more, and walked with care around the bottom of the ravine until we found the broken shape of Bunny’s body, head upturned to the sky and neck broken cleanly. He was still warm.

“Jesus,” Francis whispered under his breath, and looked away.

Wrong divinity, I thought. Those were older gods that had cursed us like this, crueler and more primal. Prayers and candles wouldn’t serve. Only blood might.

I stood there, shivering, as Francis tossed a fistful of dirt over Bunny’s face and his chest, and closed Bunny’s eyes with his thumbs. Then he took a flask from somewhere inside his jacket pocket and opened it, letting sweet-smelling whiskey drip to the ground, an offering.

We stood in vigil until it was completely dark, breathing heavily against the cold.

As we left I caught myself looking back, like Orpheus emerging from the Underworld,  half-expecting to see the accusing spirit of Bunny rise up to curse us to eternal torment. But all was quiet, soft and peaceful and blurry with snow, and I fell asleep praying fervently that no vengeful ghosts would follow me to the morning.

 

**κβʹ**

The days that followed were hazy. Burying Bunny’s body, if our meager attempt could be called a burial, did not work. We woke up in our beds on Sunday morning, over and over, plagued by a deep sense of dread.

We attempted new, elaborated rituals. Somewhere Francis had found an account on how to conduct an exorcism and showed up one morning at my door with an ampoule of holy water and a handwritten note with litanies of saints we should chant in the woods over Bunny’s body. When that did not work, he proceeded to wash Bunny’s face and scalp with the holy water, which he claimed to have stolen from one of the student-athletes. “We need it more than he does,” Francis muttered when I raised my suspicions that perhaps the theft wouldn’t ingratiate us with some of those saints he was pleading with.

Another time, we attempted a purification ritual, or so Francis called it, which included stealing a piglet from a nearby farm and cutting its throat, then spreading the blood on our faces and hands until it dried. Then we washed it off with water that we had boiled with laurel leaves, and I’d never felt more like a murderer than I did then, looking at my face in Francis’s mirror as the water turned pink then red.

The next morning it was Sunday again when we woke up, and we’d run out of ideas and out of any hope.

“I could get you off,” Francis said then, and I startled where I was sitting on the bed.

“Come on. What else are we going to do?” He spread his hand open, and I saw the tiny pills in the palm of his hand. “Take one. Do you want me to get on my knees?” he said. “I can do that. But I don’t do charity. I’d want something out of it, too.”

I thought about turning him down, but Francis was right that there was nothing better to do. The days stretched endless in front of us, empty and terrifying, trapped in an eternal vortex and the two of us the only ones aware of it.

I shrugged. I’d thought, once, that I couldn’t be interested in Francis that way. At some point that had stopped being true, out of convenience perhaps, or maybe despair, or maybe I’d been lying to myself the entire time. But the fact was that I was interested _now_ , and achingly lonely, and we had nothing in the entire world besides ourselves.

The night bled into the morning, and at some point I fell asleep without meaning to. The next day was about the same, except Francis showed up with a large bottle of gin instead of pills, and the day after that he brought both alcohol and pot, and we smoked in bed tangled among the sheets.

Sometimes we’d play cards too, or just read in silence; but more and more often we took to meeting up at Francis’s place, that was a cozy mess of ugly floor and mismatched furniture, bigger and more lived in than my own room. On some days we drove to the country, Francis waiting for me at two nineteen with his car keys in hand, speeding recklessly down the backroads, and once there we would sprawl down on the grass by the porch and roll around and kiss. Then we’d go down to the library and make ourselves comfortable with a book and a drink, waiting as the hours ticked by and the wind blew outside. We never remembered falling asleep, and we were always in Hampden by morning. Early on, Francis joked that at least he didn’t have to drive the way back.

Some days we’d remain in my room. Francis was – he was good looking, and he was fun. He had a whole array of tricks and a repertoire I had never even considered, and certainly much more experience than I did when it came to men. He was smug about it, too; and every time he was reminded of our relative experience he would grin wide and chuckle to himself, clearly relishing the change to show me something I’d never tried before. It was good enough and entertaining enough that I hardly minded, and Francis’s touch helped turn the dull repetitions of my days into something worth living through.

Still, even the distractions of bucolic idleness and senseless hedonism couldn’t keep our demons at bay forever.

After a while, even Francis’s company began to bore me. On the other side of that early glow everything felt dull and repetitive, and we drank more every day. I got sick of that too, after a while, the smell of smoke on my sheets and the harsh tingling in my mouth from alcohol, the artificial jumps of my pulse after gulping down a mouthful of pills.

I enjoyed self-indulgence as much as any no-name young man with aspirations of grandeur, but Francis relished in it to an extent that I couldn’t comprehend. After a while, he seemingly began to ignore that the world as we knew it might as well have been over; it was a magnificent excuse to throw a never-ending party. It was as though, having failed at finding a solution early on, he now refused to even entertain the thought again. The inactivity was driving me mad, but Francis looked perfectly content to keep stealing coke from Judy Poovey and drinking champagne for dinner every night.

One day I had enough and turned him down flat, saying that I wasn’t interested in going to his apartment and I’d rather take a walk. Francis balked; he threw back his head and laughed.

“Really?” he said. “You’re going out? What else is there to do?”

Nothing, and that was the whole damn point. I was sick of tired of this prison; once or twice I’d even considered killing myself to see if I would wake up on the other side, but I was too much of a coward to go through it.

The answer, I could sense it, would be yes. I was somehow sure that if I were to die the chain would break and the world would go on for everyone else, and they would shake their head in abject horror at my cooling body and go on with their lives as if I’d never been there. I could be a willing sacrifice and break this course, but I was too selfish and not quite desperate enough yet.

Every day as the sky grew dark I pictured Henry shoving Bunny down the ravine, and felt glad and oddly relieved that at least I was still alive to see another day.

 

**λδʹ**

Time blurred together. Now that I have some distance from it all I can look back to that time and see it clearly, and I believe that it couldn’t have been more than three weeks before things began to change again.

At the time, however, it felt endless. I remember feeling trapped for what felt like months, the cusp of an eternal spring that would never truly bloom. I spent most of my time with Francis unless we were fighting, which happened often, and after we fought we would reconcile with the next turn of the day. We drove aimlessly around the town in Francis’s convertible, and watched horrible flicks at the movie house in town. In later days, when Francis was at least mildly tipsy most of the time, I was the one who drove.

One afternoon we decided we were going to cook, and made a massive production of it. Francis went to buy groceries before I woke up (in Hampden, most stores closed at midday on Sunday) and came to pick me up right after. Once at Francis’s we turned the stove on and began preparing dinner: we cooked meat and cut up onions and vegetables, and I tried following a cake recipe Francis had found in one of his aunt’s books only to end up making a monumental mess on the counter. The batter was good, though, and we ended up eating it with our fingers from a porcelain bowl. At one point Francis grabbed my hand mid-air, then pulled me closer and kissed me on the lips, smiling.

By the evening we’d made enough food to feed a party of seven for one of our dinners with Julian, with enough leftovers to make a pleasant lunch for the day after. As it was just the two of us and there would be no day after, we attempted valiantly to eat at least a small serving of everything, from the ribs to the custard, washed down with a generous helping of red wine and whiskey. By the end of the evening, we felt about ready to pass out.

“And we won’t even have to do the dishes,” Francis said. “See? Could’ve been worse.”

He was right, I said, and we toasted to that. It was about one in the morning; soon enough I began to feel drowsy and closed my eyes, and then it was two nineteen on a Sunday, all over again.

Francis was waiting for me in his convertible and asked me if I wanted to go to his place today. His fingers brushed my knees as he spoke, lightly, and I knew from that how he envisioned the afternoon going. I said yes, but once we got to the apartment the sight of the kitchen unsettled me. It was spotless and immaculate, when just yesterday it had looked as though a tornado had swept through it.

I ended up in an awful mood for the rest of the day, and after picking one fight too many with Francis I just left, walking back to Monmouth in the cold so that the night and the snow could clear my head.

It made me feel better, marginally, and in the days after I began to pick up the habit. I found myself often walking late into at night, leaving soft footprints in the fresh snow and half wondering what would have happened if I remained outside until the morning, if I would end up magically transported to the dull safety of my bed. Or perhaps freeze to death, as it had nearly happened once before; and while I balked at the thought of suicide, the forever stillness of hypothermia had begun to exercise a twisted charm on my imagination.

One evening, well after I’d begun losing track of days, my feet carried me in the vicinity of the twins’ apartment before I’d even realized it. When I found myself under familiar windows I looked up as if by reflex, catching a glimpse of a well-lit window and a dark silhouette through it. Charles.

I raised one hand over my head, awkwardly, and waved. Charles stilled, cigarette against his lips, and I felt my chest swell with an odd kind of nostalgia. How long had it been since I’d last been with the twins? It felt like years.

I ran to the front steps and rang the doorbell, brushing snow off my shoulders.

It was Camilla who opened the door.

“Richard,” she said. “You look…”

Like I’d done two lines of coke then went for a walk in the snow, I supposed. I cleared my throat. “Can I come in?”

“Henry said…” Camilla began, but she let me in all the same and closed the door softly behind me.

Charles had come to the door as well, half-smoked cigarette still dangling from his fingers. I turned my eyes from him to his sister and back to Charles again, all blond hair and the same knowing eyes.

Then Camilla said, “You’re ruining our alibis, you know. Henry said not to come to you tonight.”

“Have you seen Francis?” Charles asked. “He bailed on us. Didn’t show up today at all, and when we went by his place…” He shook his head. “Henry’s pissed. And here I thought that of all of us Francis really wouldn’t give a shit about Bunny dying.”

I didn’t ask if they’d done it — there was no reason for them not to kill him, and I could see the answer in the determined set of their eyes, the slight frown at the corner of Camilla’s mouth. So I said nothing, merely stared, until the room seemed to spin around me and I realized I was swaying in place. It was too hot of a sudden, suffocating.

“Richard!” Camilla rushed by my side, clasped her delicate fingers around my arm. She was beautiful, and the sight of her rosy cheeks and half-opened lips hit me like the sting of one of Eros’s arrows. I drank in the sight of her face so close to mine, after what felt like ages, and I thought — I had forgotten how much I cared for her, so lost in my neverending battle that I’d hardly had a chance to miss her.

Camilla led me to a chair in the kitchen, solicitous, Charles at her side. They asked me if I had dinner, and perhaps I might want some leftovers? They asked how long I’d been out in the snow, and what my mental state was. Charles, I gathered, seemed very concerned that I might blame myself out of misplaced guilt, and spent quite some time telling me that what had happened to Bunny was not my fault, and they just had to deal with him.

I laughed then, a loud snort, and twin blond heads turned to look at me with concern.

“You have no idea,” I said, and then I realized I was laughing almost maniacally, and turned it into a cough. “You don’t know. You don’t want to know,” I said, except that was a lie. The whole time I’d been in Hampden I’d just wanted the twins to look at me as they were doing now, frowning in rapt attention.

And so it all came out of me, the ravine and the sudden snow and this endless Sunday, my eyes blinking open at two nineteen. Francis was caught up in it too, I explained, and that was why he hadn’t come today. He hadn’t come in a long time.

At first, I was afraid they’d think me insane. But as I went on talking and my words tangled together into unspeakable gibberish, the more worried Charles and Camilla looked concerned. They never for a moment appear to doubt that I was telling the truth, and I felt an unspeakable surge of affection for them at the realization.

“We’ve been cursed,” said Camilla, too-serious, at the same time as Charles said, “Fuck, I need a drink.”

He excused himself to go rummage somewhere in the dining room, leaving me alone with Camilla. It happened all quite suddenly: one moment the atmosphere was tense and worried; the next Camilla and I were alone, her sweet face so intimately familiar, and I had not seen her in so long. I was high, which was no excuse, and cosmically depressed.

“You’re beautiful,” I said, and then I leaned over and pressed my cold lips to her, soft and shapely.

That was when Charles walked back in. I missed the sound of his footsteps but heard him clearing his throat, and Camilla jumped away from me.

“ _Richard_?” Charles said, except he wasn’t speaking to me at all — my name was for Camilla, a question. “Camilla,” he said. “Milly. Really?” He shook his head, and all of a sudden he looked dangerous.

I stood up. My head was spinning still, but I ignored it. “I should go.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Camilla. She was still looking at Charles. “Come here,” she said, and Charles slowly walked over.

Then, under my wide-eyed gaze, she kissed Charles on the mouth.

It wasn’t a soft peak, chaste and brotherly, but a deep open-mouthed kiss, the kind that lovers might share.

“There,” Camilla said, pulling back. “So you can’t complain you’ve been left out.” And then she said, “You too, Richard.”

I blinked once, twice, and then it became clear that she meant for me to kiss Charles.

“Do you…”

“We’re cursed,” she said, firmly. “We can do whatever we want.”

“And then, tomorrow,” she went on, “we’ll think of a way to get out of this mess.”

 

**λεʹ**

I went looking for Francis as soon as I woke up.

I knew, instinctively, that Charles and Camilla would remember last night. But they’d be with Henry still, as we’d planned together, speaking in half-whispers in the cozy intimacy of the twins’ dining room. At first, Camilla had suggested that she’d go with Henry and Charles should come to me, but Charles had seemed unimpressed with the idea, and he’d refused to go alone with Henry either.

“Fine,” Camilla had said, throwing her hands up in the air. “But if you complain again I’ll laugh in your face.”

She’d been curled up against Charles’s side as she’d spoken, her blonde head tucked in neatly in the crook of his neck. I couldn’t stop staring at the both of them.

Francis, when I found him, was in a foul mood.

“Richard. There you are,” he called, “Bored? Tell me. Are you having fun with your nature walks? Bunny would be proud.”

“I told Camilla and Charles. Last night.”

That stunned Francis into silence, for a heartbeat or two. Then he smoothed the frown away from his forehead and smiled wryly. “That’s not going to work. They’ll have forgotten by now. You know, sometimes I think I’d prefer to forget.”

“They remember.”

Where that certainty was coming from I didn’t know, because I hadn’t spoken with the twins at all since I’d woken up at two nineteen, and yet I was sure beyond any doubt. “You should come with me.” It must be around four in the afternoon and they would be returning soon from the woods, fresh from one more murder.

Francis seemed to think about it. Then, “All right,” he said, warily. “But when they’ll greet you like nothing is wrong and offer to make you dinner, I told you so.”

I took Francis along the same streets I’d walked last night, still free of snow. Charles opened the door for us, bustling with a kind of nervous energy, took one look at Francis and let him in without any comments.

“Fuck me,” Francis said. “You really told them.”

“Looks like it,” Charles spoke before I could, sounding oddly defiant. “What about it?”

“You…” Francis stared from Charles and back to me, then to Charles again. Camilla, I saw, was listening in from the kitchen. “You didn’t remember when _I_ told you,” he said, looking at Charles. “The first day I got stuck into this. You laughed in my face and told me to fuck off and the day after, I thought— but you didn’t. And then last week. I tried explaining it a couple of times, but…”

That was new to me. I didn’t know Francis had attempted to tell anyone else; he hadn’t ever suggested that we try. Hesitantly, I said, “Maybe it had to come from me? I was the first one who…”

Suddenly, Francis laughed. “Oh,” he said. “ _Oh_.” As if he’d just divined some fundamental truth. “Did you tell them, or did you _tell_ them? Like he did with me, you know,” he said to Charles. “Richard, you _slut_.”

For some reason, I felt my face go warm under Francis’s stare. It wasn’t as if — I didn’t owe him anything. And we hadn’t done anything last night with the twins either, barely, but now Francis was smiling dryly into my face and Charles’s eyes darted between the two of us, and I stood in the middle of all these eyes with my hands curled into fists.

“Oh, calm down, all of you.”

Camilla’s voice rang loud and clear, a touch snappy, as if telling three unruly pet dogs to sit. “Come on,” she said, gentler. “Boys. We have worse problems to deal with.”

Camilla, like Francis, first suggested we bury the body.

“We’ve tried that,” I offered. “And we tried an exorcism also, but…” I shrugged. Camilla looked interested.

“Where did you get the holy water?”

“Stole it,” said Francis. “And we tried the thing Henry did, with pig’s blood. We burned candles and chanted hymns. The only thing we didn’t try was summoning Dionysus again. We don’t have three days to fast, and it keeps getting cold at night.” And then he said, “Richard, do you think your friend Judy would help you make a chiton?”

I shook my head, amused at the image, and Francis snorted.

Through the window, it was snowing again. Subconsciously, I’d come to associate snowfall with twilight, and even after we freed ourselves of this time trap it took me weeks if not months until I could readjust myself to weather patterns.

Charles was speaking. “Then, there’s just one thing you’ve never tried. Just… not killing Bunny. And see what happens.”

Francis and I looked at each other and shrugged. Neither of us had been too keen to try that — stopping Henry from killing Bunny would’ve taken a lot of effort, and the risks were monumental. We might escape this curse only to find ourselves in jail before the end of the week.

“The thing is…” I began, and Francis said, “Charles, I don’t think—”

Then Camilla said, “Have you tried leaving Hampden?”

“And fly to Argentina?” The words slipped before I could reign them in. “Not really, no. I’m short on funds.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re so melodramatic. We could just get in Francis’s car and drive until we’re out of town.”

“We’ve done that. We went to the country house.”

“But you stopped there,” Camilla guessed. “And you went to sleep, right? And woke up in Hampden.”

“Yes.”

“What if we kept driving until morning? If we’re not here, maybe…”

“That’s not a bad plan,” Francis said, and Camilla snorted. “But I don’t think I can drive. Got an early start on the evening.”

That was a delicate way to say that he hadn’t been sober for days. Unlike myself, Francis’s day began very early in the morning, at about seven, and by the time I woke up, he would be well into his first bottle. One good thing of waking up in the same way every morning was the lack of hangovers, and Francis seemed to be putting that to full advantage.

“I can drive,” I offered. We stood up, just like that, and walked outside to find the town quiet and painted white. I helped Charles put snow chains on the wheels of Francis’s car, and my hands shook with restless energy as I fastened my seatbelt.

Maybe, I thought. Maybe this time.

 

**ληʹ**

It didn’t work, of course. I drove past the town borders and well past midnight but the snow kept falling, a flurry of white until the road around us became unrecognizable. There wasn’t a single soul around us, no towns where they should have been, no gas stations or trucks or animals running from the cold. There were no lights either, just a strange pale glow that seemed to come from the road itself. When the car clock signed three forty in the morning, and Francis’s wristwatch four twelve, the glow raised around us like white fog, becoming brighter and brighter, and I stopped the car and closed my eyes against the bursting light.

I woke up, predictably, Sunday afternoon. Once again Camilla and Charles went along with Henry’s plan, then we all tried burying Bunny with more consideration, following Camilla’s instructions. She suggested we all apologize to Bunny for killing him, to calm his restless spirit.

“Seriously?” Francis blurted, but Camilla threw him a sharp look.

“Have you got any better ideas?” and then, immediately. “I don’t think so.”

Burying Bunny didn’t work, either. Neither did cutting our own arms for a blood path, hoping the bound would carry us together out of this time vortex. We tried hallucinogens and Dionysian hymns and those didn’t work, either.

With every new bright morning, our hope dimmed. On the fourth day since I’d dragged the twins into this, Charles wouldn’t stop drinking from one of several bottles he carried around. He was worse than even Francis, worse than I’d ever seen him, and he had a mean bark when I suggested that maybe he should cut back on it a bit if he couldn’t even stand on his feet.

Charles’s voice when he snapped at me was low and horrible, his face dark; Camilla cried at the sight of it, and Francis looked like he wanted to punch the wall.

“Come on,” he said, dragging me off. “He’s not worth it. It’s always like this.”

What did Francis mean, I wondered, but he didn’t seem intentioned to talk about it and so I did not ask. That night I fell asleep in Francis’s bed, so soft with blankets and pillows that it felt almost like a cloud.

In the morning, Charles was nowhere to be seen.

 

**λθʹ**

I woke up to Francis pounding at my door. Camilla had come to him, he said, first thing in the morning, and she’d asked if today we could both go to the ravine with her and Henry.

“What about Charles?” I asked, and Francis shrugged.

“Throwing up his very soul by now, if he kept drinking as much as last night. Better to leave him alone when he’s in that mood,” he said, knowingly. “Especially for Camilla.”

Then he left, hurrying back to the woods where Henry and Camilla already waited. I took some time to dress and eat something, and on my way out of the dorm building I walked into Judy’s friend Jack Teitelbaum, who asked me if I was going to the party. That made me laugh hysterically; it felt as though this party had dragged on for weeks, day after day after day. Truly, I thought, wiping my eyes on the back of my sleeve, there wasn’t much difference between this cursed ordeal and the regular rhythm of the days at Hampden, a haven out of time filled with oddities and eccentricities.

“Did you have something earlier?” asked Jack, in a tone that implied he would like to partake in whatever drug he thought I’d taken.

“Vitamins,” I said, brightly, and laughed to myself.

That odd burst of laughter carried me until I caught a glimpse of Bunny’s back.

I immediately turned away, feeling guilty, heart beating loud in my throat. Lately, I’d seen much more of Bunny as a corpse than I did of him alive. I’d grown familiar with the sight of his face slack and pale, spotted with dirt from the bottom of the ravine, his eyes glassed over and pulled close by Camilla’s slender fingers.

I made my way to the patch of woods over the ravine, walking slowly.

“Richard?” It was Henry. Him too I hadn’t seen in quite some time, and I was struck by how much he casually resembled Bunny from a distance and at an angle. The tall stocky build, the wire-frame glasses; only when he turned fully and I fully saw his face the illusion was broken.

“What are you doing here?”

I didn’t know what to reply. Camilla had some sort of plan, but I didn’t know how much she’d told Henry already. I turned to her with a questioning look.

“I thought he should be here,” she said. “Henry, trust me. There’s something—”

“You want to talk now?” Henry’s voice was a furious whisper. “Camilla, he could come up any moment now. If he’s still coming. It’ll be our only chance to—”

He was cut off by the sound of Francis’s low laughter, deep and bitter. “Only chance,” he said. “Henry I fucking wish that was true.”

Henry frowned. “If he talks to the wrong person. Marion, that airhead. Or Cloke and his friends…”

“It’s not that,” said Camilla. “Henry, look, we need to leave, and Richard and I need to tell you something.”

“But what if—”

“Look, we’ve been here for hours,” Francis said. “It’s getting almost dark. Don’t you think that if he’d gone walking, he’d be here by now? We should just—”

“Henry, no. Please, listen to me,” she said. “Please. Let me try—”

Just then we heard a sound of footsteps in the distance, the noise of someone wading through the undergrowth. Bunny liked to keep himself at the margins of the path, and grab bits of tall grass and tear off low-hanging leaves as he walked.

“Hide,” Henry said, but Camilla shook her head.

“Hey!” Bunny’s voice cracked through the air like a gunshot. “What the hell? What are you doing here?”

Intent as he was staring at Camilla and Henry, he’d missed Francis and me completely. I walked back into the bushes at the curve of the path, just in case. The last time I’d seen Bunny he’d come to me with a drunken confession, and we hadn’t spoken since. If he saw me here and now, seemingly siding with Henry, there was no telling how he’d react.

“Are you following me?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Henry said. “We were here first.”

“I see that. You,” Bunny’s eyes dragged slowly from Henry to Camilla. “And you. Does your brother know? Can’t imagine he’d be too pleased.”

Camilla had always been quick. She wasn’t very tall for a girl, not tall at all compared to Bunny, but something in the way she looked at him suggested the feeling of staring him down. “Were _you_ following us?” she said, coolly, effectively putting Bunny in the position of having to justify himself.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “I’m taking a walk.”

“At this hour? In the woods? Well,” Camilla said. “If you say so.”

I’d never realized how condescending Camilla’s voice could be. Something in her tone seemed to piss Bunny off beyond measure; from my spot among the bushes, I could see the angle of his head, the way his shoe scraped dirt off the ground as he kicked at it.

“You know what your problem is, girlie?” he asked. “It’s that you’re not pretty enough to make up for how you never shut up.” He took a step closer, almost threatening, and Henry went rigid at Camilla’s side.

“Don’t,” she warned, grabbing at his arm.

“Bunny,” Herny said, low. “Shut the fuck up.”

It seemed just then to occur to Bunny that he was alone in the woods with Henry, who was taller and bigger than him, and Camilla whom he’d spent the last few weeks tormenting. His head whipped around, to take in the desert path and the ravine below.

“Henry,” Camilla said. “It’s not worth it. We’re leaving.”

She tugged his hand, almost dragging him past Bunny and back on the path where he’d come from. She didn’t turn to look at Francis and me, gave no sign she even knew we were here, and once they’d disappeared down the path Bunny stood there for five full minutes, muttering to himself. I caught some of it: murderers, liars, stuck-up slut.

“Charming,” Francis said, once he was gone. “Mrs. Corcoran would need to go lie down if she heard that.”

I followed Francis back to the car in silence. Camilla was waiting for us there, pacing restlessly. Henry was in the passenger seat, head turned away.

“Did you tell him?”

She nodded. “I think he believes me, at least.”

I snorted. I never doubted for a moment that Henry would believe it, superstitious as he was. “Does he think we offended a divinity? Or was it Bunny’s restless spirit?”

Camilla’s pretty face soured at the mention of Bunny. “Well. He said it could be either, but he really wants to murder Bunny now. More than he did earlier.”

I was beginning to understand, about Henry and Camilla, and so I nodded slightly to myself.

“Where are we going?” Francis asked. “Henry’s? Your place?”

Camilla nodded. “Our apartment. I think— Charles should be better, by now.”

The drive was silent until about halfway when Henry’s natural inclination to research began getting the better of his dark mood. “It must have been fascinating what you went through, Richard,” he said, in a tone that reminded me startlingly of Julian. “When we have some time, you’ll have to tell me everything about it. Did you think of keeping a journal? Even if you can’t bring it with you, the act of writing down helps the mind to remember better.”

We reached the twins’ apartment to find Charles there, thankfully, looking faintly green but in a less hostile mood than he had been yesterday.

“Oh look, it’s the whole gang,” he said when he caught sight of Henry. “We’ve tried everything, you’ll hate it,” he told him. “Being late. All of your brilliant ideas won’t work.”

“I stopped him from killing Bunny today,” Camilla said, and Charles jumped to his feet.

“You did what? Camilla. We could— he’ll talk. We could go to _prison_.”

“You’ve said it, we tried everything. If— if we wake up, and it’s tomorrow. Then we’ll think about Bunny. We can make another plan. Henry will think of something.”

We all turned to stare at Henry, who was readjusting his glasses. “I think,” he said, slowly. “We could make it look like an overdose, if we have to. But for now, we need to focus on getting free of this…” He seemed to seek for the right word. “Timetrap. If it was killing Bunny that caused it, then tomorrow we should be free. We’ll burn candles tonight, and some offerings. That should help.”

“And if it doesn’t work?”

That was Francis, who’d propped himself up against the wall, arms crossed over his chest.

“If it doesn’t work, tomorrow we’ll do it again. Properly, this time.” It took me a moment to realize that Henry spoke of killing Bunny again. His voice sounded terrible. “We’ll make a proper offer out of him. A sacrifice to the gods.”

Then he shrugged, taking off his glasses to clean one of the lenses with the sleeve of his sweater. “I’ve studied some rituals. It’ll work.”

 

**μʹ**

The next day I still woke up in my bed at two nineteen, which was a disappointment, but not too much of one. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, I had a purpose and an end in sight. Such was my faith in Henry, that I never for a moment doubted his ritual would not work.

We’d made plans to meet in the woods as soon as I’d wake up, and so I threw on non-distinct clothes and left Monmouth immediately, too high-strung to eat anything.

“Hello, Richard,” Francis greeted me once I found the others in the woods. It was barely three in the afternoon, and Bunny would be at the party for a good hour still. “Obviously, yesterday didn’t work. But you should see Henry’s plan— or don’t,” he said. “He’ll talk your ear off if you give him half a chance. Has written down a translation and everything.”

Henry’s ritual looked intriguing, but Henry seemed to be the one who could make full sense of it without a headache, and I was too nervous to focus on his angular script. Francis gave me the gist of it: it involved sacred wines and incense, and a silver knife Henry had bought from the hippie in town who also sold herbs. We’d have to cut our arms with it. I nodded, and said I'd certainly done worse.

Charles was talking to Camilla, their heads close. She nodded and pushed a lock of blond hair behind her ear. Francis lit himself a cigarette, and Henry glared at him.

“What?” he said. “We know when he’s going to be here. It’s not the right time yet.”

The minutes dragged by slowly, punctuated by the soft ticking of Francis’s watch. Three twenty, three forty-three, four-oh-seven. We hid inside the bushes and waited.

We waited, and then waited some more. Four fifteen, four twenty-six. Bunny should have been here by now; he was always here by now.

Slowly, Camilla asked, “Do you think…”

“There you all are.”

It was Bunny, descending from the opposite side of the path. He must have walked through one of the fields and doubled back, and could see us perfectly from his advantage. We startled, half-jumping, and I got a good look at him— face white, eyes reddened, lips thin.

Bunny saw me staring, and his lip curled. “You, too,” he said. “So you were waiting for me,” he told Henry. “I knew it. Yesterday.”

And then he reached inside his jacket and pulled out a gun.

Camilla screamed.

We jumped out of the bushes, scattering— we were half trapped like this, in the underbrush, and  Bunny’s vantage position didn’t give us much cover. The first gunshot broke the air, and I felt cold fear sink into my bones.

The bullet went wide, into the trees, and I scrambled to the road and down the taller trees to the side of it, just over the ravine.

“You murderer,” Bunny screamed. “I knew it. Murderer. You killed that man and you tried to kill me in Italy and I don’t know what you did now but I’m not going to let you.”

He kept yelling, accusations and hysterics and insults as he shot one bullet after the other. He couldn’t aim for shit, I thought, hysterically. Francis rolled out of the way, and I grabbed him and pulled him to the side of the road, crouching by the same tree.

Bunny seemed intent on going after Henry, stalking down the path in heavy steps, almost completely turned away from where we were hiding. I could’ve jumped him, I thought. My hands were shaking with nerves.

Another shot, and Henry screamed.

I looked up, chilled, to see that Bunny had managed to hit Henry on the thigh. It made him stumble and slow down, and Bunny took another of those measured, horrible steps— he moved towards Henry, gun held in two shaking hands, and emptied the rest of the clip against him.

Henry screamed again. He was on the ground, thrashing, and there was _so much blood_ — bright and scarlet, everywhere. The empty chamber of Bunny’s gun clicked against the hammer, echoing through the woods. Bunny swore under his breath, fumbling into his pocket for a handful of bullets, and from my hiding spot between the trees I could see how hard his arm was shaking. The bullets fell from his hand and spilled onto the ground, rolling in all directions.

He was distracted, I thought. Disarmed. Henry was whimpering on the ground, and I met Francis’s eyes.

And then Charles came rushing out of the bushes, swearing up a storm and tackling Bunny to the ground. He crushed his hand around Bunny’s slack wrist and the gun flew out of his hand, falling forgotten into the dust. Bunny grunted and shifted in Charles’s hold, hitting Charles’s face with his forehead with a crunch. Charles groaned but he didn’t move, keeping Bunny pinned. They were twisting on the ground, mud and leaves and blood on their neat sweaters, and I rushed to Henry’s side, taking off my jacket and pressing it over his shoulder and chest. There was a lot of blood.

With the corner of my eye I saw Francis move— he bent down at Charles’s side and was keeping Bunny pinned by his shoulders, ignoring Bunny’s vicious headbutts and his even more vicious words.

“Richard,” Henry sputtered, coughing. There was blood trailing from his mouth. “Camilla?”

Camilla. I’d lost sight of her, in all the chaos. I whipped my head around, searching frantically, and then I found her— standing to the side, her face streaked with dirt, Bunny’s gun held firmly in her hands. 

“Charles,” she said. “Move.”

Unlike Bunny, her hold on the gun was steady. Her pale face was streaked with tears and there were leaves in her hair, dust clinging to her clothes. She looked like an angel of death.

I watched her move with my heart in my throat. Francis jumped to his feet and Charles pulled back, still straddling Bunny’s hips, and Bunny yelled and spat but it made no difference. Camilla put two shots in quick succession through Bunny's face, splattering her brother with blood, and Charles shouted and threw himself to the side as Bunny convulsed.

“Charles,” she said. “Charles, we need— we need an ambulance. Call someone. You need to run.”

Slowly, Charles got to his feet. He looked down to Bunny, who wasn’t moving, and then to Henry, who was drawing slow ragged breath, my jacket and hands red with blood.

 _“_ Run,” Camilla said, urgently. “We’ll make something up. _Go._ ”

Charles nodded, swearing under his breath, then turned on his back and began to run down the path.

As soon as he was gone Camilla started crying, sobbing uncontrollably. Slowly, Francis put his arm around her shoulder. She leaned into it, shaking with sobs.

I thought that perhaps, tomorrow… but I knew with absolute certainty, somehow, that tomorrow would be a Monday, and there would be snow in the morning, and life would go on.

All around us, silence fell.

**Author's Note:**

> It didn't make it into the fic, but Bunny probably got his gun by stealing it from Cloke Rayburn, who ends up under investigation in every universe. Also, Richard was stuck in the time loop for forty days. In my mind, Henry has a decent chance at survival, but feel free to imagine the ending going however you prefer.


End file.
